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Philosophy and education in Africa
hr. 3. Educodonal
Drvdopmenr, Vol. 6. No. 4. pp. 281-289 Pergamon Journals Ltd. 1986. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS The French Education System: H. D. Lewis. Groom Helm, London, 1985. This is a frustrating book. H. D. Lewis sets out to present a comprehensive account of the development of the French educational system from the beginning of the Fifth Republic until the time of writing (January, 1985). While the succinct style is to be welcomed, it verges in some piaces on extreme bream-resuIt~g in rather cursory treatment of major attempts over the past two decades to change the nature and orientation of French education. The fundamental flaw is the lack of an overall analytic framework. The five page intr~uction to chapters on nursery and primary education, the college, the &c&e, higher education (including teacher training), educational administration and the inspectorate is far too sparse. The book ends abruptly with no including chapter, whereas it would have made far more stimulating reading to have set recent developments in French education against a more rigorous analysis of the characteristic features of the system. For example, the scene should have been set with a discussion of contemporary educational issues in relation to historical trends, cultural priorities and perennial problems. Such fundamantal issues should have included the historical tension between church and state with its manifestation in the early 1980s in the crisis over the private sector. No study of the French education system can avoid discussing the uneasy dialective between highly prescriptive control from the centre, and moves to innovate at institutional or classroom level. Lewis also needed to discuss the all-pervasive cultural ethos that imbues the curriculum with a particular phil~phic~ and hteracy bias (irrespective of strong regional aspirations, or the needs of minority migrant groups). He should have emphasised the predominant concern with maintaining ‘standards’ through the pursuit of academic excellence (manifested through an excessive marking system), which has undermined moves to develop parallel vocational programmes. With the State as the gate-keeper of such ‘standards’, the tension within a highly competitive system, in which examinations and repetition mechanisms act as screening devices, needed to be explained with reference to ambiguous attitudes towards more overt selection procedures. The target audience of this book is not very apparent. A student, with little background knowledge about the system, would be confused by the lack of historical or phiIo~phi~1 unde~innings. The imprecise system of cross-referencing (cf. p. 55, p. 156) also presents a drawback. Specialists in contemporary French history or education would find the overview useful, but would regret the failure of the author to draw together his evident experience and knowledge into a more stimulating argument. C. B. W. TREFFGARNE University of London Institute of Education
PhiIosophy and Education in Africa: R. J. Njoroge and G. A. Bennaars. Transafrica Press, Nairobi. 1986. 259 pp., 80 Kenyan shillings, paperback. Sub-titled ‘an introductory text for students of education’, this book is the outcome of some ten years of the authors’ experiences in teaching philosophy of education courses at Kenyatta University. The book divides into two halves, the first of which is taken up with clarifying the nature of the philosophy of education, while the second part is concerned with the meaning of education. While both of these themes have a fully justifiable place in an intr~ucto~ text, confinement to them does not convey the range of the subject. This limitation could be serious if the book is to be used as a course textbook. For example, there is no discussion of such standard agenda items as indignation, training, autonomy, neutrality, emotion, equality, assessment, authority, punishment, choice or control of the curriculum, though part two does indicate something of the variety of overall conceptions of education. The authors define philosophy as ‘any serious attempt by people to arrive at an answer or response to the basic questions of human Iife’. They proceed to distinguish general from technical philosophy so as to mark off informal achievements in the way of individual wisdom from the more critically disciplined and special&d thinking of the professional philsopher. Technical philosophy of education is further divided into ethnophilosophy, for example, a study of the thought-world of the Bantu, phenomenological study of cultural forms, critique of political ideas on education and analytic philosophy. As in some Western countries, a long period of attention to the ‘isms’ (pragmatism, empiricism, etc.) is said to have given way in the 1960s to the idea of there being foundation disciplines (history, psychology, sociology and philosophy). Of these, philosophy of education was at first concerned with Peters, Hirst and their associates, but this was found to be too abstract and insuffi~ently directed to an African context. There was also the problem of finding people with sufficient training in technical philosophy to teach analytic philosophy of education. One result of this was that study became assimilated to Freire’s ‘banking’ concept of education, whereas the authors wish to stress philosophy as an activity .and not a body of knowledge, or as process rather than product. ‘Ihe second part of the book, on the meaning of education, begins with Peters’ three criteria for the concept. Discussion then leads to the development of four ‘dimensions’ of education: the normative, the cognitive, the creative and the dialogic. This Ieads to a definition of education as ‘the intersubjective process of learning to be a self-reliant person in society’. In the course of discussing these four dimensions, the authors venture into ethics and epistemology (the normative and the cognitive dimensions), they appraise progressive or child-centered theory, and Nyerere’s concept of self-reliance thus finds favour. I 287
288
BOOK REVIEWS
found the discussion of knowledge to be the most interesting in this part. I was puzzled by the repeated expression of a desire for an African philosophy of education, when so much of their own chosen discussion referred to Western texts and Western historical experience. In what sense can philosophy of education be African? There seem to me to be at least two senses in which this might validly be possible. Firstly, more work in philosophy of education might originate in the thinking of African scholars, and secondly, philosophical methods of critical assessment might be applied more to specifically African problems, institutions or practices. But in both cases, philosophy of education would remain in a very important sense nonAfrican. This does not mean that it would thereby be British or American; it would just be philosophy, much as mathematics and science are not any particular nation’s property. P. 0. Bodunrin of the University of Ibadan took a similarly universal view of pure philosophy in an article entitled ‘The Question of African Philosophy’ in the journal Philosophy, April 1981. The authors certainly make a contribution to getting a more African philosophy of education in the first sense, namely by themselves engaging in philosophical discussion of educational questions. To the extent that their arguments are valid and interesting they could merit a place in courses taught in Britain, America or anywhere else; they would not necessarily be peculiarly African. Taking the other valid alternative, namely of applying general philosophical methods to peculiarly African problems, it seems to me that there was much more opportunity here than had been taken. There are indeed some references to Nyerere’s concept of self-reliance, and an epistemological point is illustrated by reference to knowing the usefulness of fertiliser for a shamba, but there is no discussion of such concepts as, for example, national development, national consciousness, harambee schools or equality as against selection for qualitatively superior education. Perhaps a major political problem lies in a way of more philosophical discussion in these areas, namely the possible lack of freedom of the African scholar to comment on political ideas and movements. But are there any educational ideas that are entirely without political implications? This may well be an intractable problem, in spite of a cover design suggestive of a new dawn. The book is reasonably well produced, though in my copy pages 81-112 confusingly came between 144 and 145. Users of the book would have benefited from provision of an index. There is a select bibliography of eighteen titles, some of which I would not myself wish to recommend. R. F. DEARDEN
University of Birmingham
New Horizons In Muslim Education: Islamic Monograph Series: Syed Ali Ashraf. Hodder & Stoughton/Islamic Academy, Cambridge, 1985, 138 pp. In this monograph, the author Syed Ali Ashraf, who was one of the Organising Secretaries (Dr Abdullah Zaid, a Saudi educationist and the present reviewer were the other two) of the First World Conference on Muslim Education
held in Holy Makkah in 1977 and its follow-up seminars which were held successively at Islamabad in 1980, Dhaka in 1981 and Jakarta in 1982, recapitulates on certain issues of Muslim education which these moots considered and the impact that they, in Ashrafs view, have generated. To mention the background in which these conferences were held, it may be remembered that, as the new international ideological and cultural patterns began to crystallise in the post War years, it became increasingly evident to the Muslim Ummah who had emerged from the colonial rule alienated, divided and ideologically confused, that unless Muslims made a concerted effort, an intellectual j&ad, to rediscover their own true self and established their modus vivendi in the new world order, they would be threatened with a check-mate from the imposing world of science, technology and secularism. Even during the colonial heydays Muslim thinkers like AlAfghani (Iran), Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (India), Shaikh Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Egypt) and Sir Muhammad Iqbai (Pakistan) and others had essayed to reconstruct Islamic thought and education in the wake of the impact of Western Education accepting its universalistic and rejecting its particularistic trends. Iqbal alone had produced a persuasive intellectual synthesis of Islam and modem thought which gave Muslims great repose in their own heritage. In 1975, the Saudi government decided to sponsor three world-level conferences on technology (1975), economics (1976) and education (1977) to encourage the present day generation of scholars to articulate Islamic concepts and principles in these important fields. Held in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, these moots received universal Muslim acclaim and gave the Ummah a renewed confidence. There were two crucial aspects to the process of reconstruction of Islamic thought and education: (a) to enunciate concepts upholding Ismlamic norms vis d vb ensuring the development of liberal and rational thought and scientific and technolo~cal progress, and (b) to interpret and implement these concepts within the Muslim institutional networks in order to influence policies and planning for the achievement of perceived Muslim objectives. The most obtrusive ideological challenge to Islam comes from the rising tide of secularism which is subtly and surreptitiously entering into Islamdom through modern systems and lifestyles. Secularism, as defined by its proponents and taken to its logical conclusion, rejects any belief in God as the creator of the universe and hence the source of knowledge. It obliges man to reject the supernatural and instead, deifies man. Islam, on the other hand, enjoins an unquestioning belief in God as the creator, sustainer and master of the universe; and the source of all knowledge. It commits man to the fullest understanding of the infinite mysteries of the universe and fulfilment of the divine imperatives in life. Secularism is seen by Muslims, inter afia, as a justification for man’s mastery over man; the cleverer, tech~ologi~lly advanced and more powerful man will dominate, control and enslave the poorer, backward and less fortunate man. Therefore, as ideal typical normative systemsm Islam and secularism are mutuaUy anti-thetical, and Ashraf is right in asserting that in ideal terms there can be no compromise between the two. But, at the practical level, Islam has successfully obliterated the bi-polar, dualistic juxtaposition of reality: the domain of God as opposed to the domain of man. According to Islam, nothing is outside the domain of God,
Drvdopmenr, Vol. 6. No. 4. pp. 281-289 Pergamon Journals Ltd. 1986. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS The French Education System: H. D. Lewis. Groom Helm, London, 1985. This is a frustrating book. H. D. Lewis sets out to present a comprehensive account of the development of the French educational system from the beginning of the Fifth Republic until the time of writing (January, 1985). While the succinct style is to be welcomed, it verges in some piaces on extreme bream-resuIt~g in rather cursory treatment of major attempts over the past two decades to change the nature and orientation of French education. The fundamental flaw is the lack of an overall analytic framework. The five page intr~uction to chapters on nursery and primary education, the college, the &c&e, higher education (including teacher training), educational administration and the inspectorate is far too sparse. The book ends abruptly with no including chapter, whereas it would have made far more stimulating reading to have set recent developments in French education against a more rigorous analysis of the characteristic features of the system. For example, the scene should have been set with a discussion of contemporary educational issues in relation to historical trends, cultural priorities and perennial problems. Such fundamantal issues should have included the historical tension between church and state with its manifestation in the early 1980s in the crisis over the private sector. No study of the French education system can avoid discussing the uneasy dialective between highly prescriptive control from the centre, and moves to innovate at institutional or classroom level. Lewis also needed to discuss the all-pervasive cultural ethos that imbues the curriculum with a particular phil~phic~ and hteracy bias (irrespective of strong regional aspirations, or the needs of minority migrant groups). He should have emphasised the predominant concern with maintaining ‘standards’ through the pursuit of academic excellence (manifested through an excessive marking system), which has undermined moves to develop parallel vocational programmes. With the State as the gate-keeper of such ‘standards’, the tension within a highly competitive system, in which examinations and repetition mechanisms act as screening devices, needed to be explained with reference to ambiguous attitudes towards more overt selection procedures. The target audience of this book is not very apparent. A student, with little background knowledge about the system, would be confused by the lack of historical or phiIo~phi~1 unde~innings. The imprecise system of cross-referencing (cf. p. 55, p. 156) also presents a drawback. Specialists in contemporary French history or education would find the overview useful, but would regret the failure of the author to draw together his evident experience and knowledge into a more stimulating argument. C. B. W. TREFFGARNE University of London Institute of Education
PhiIosophy and Education in Africa: R. J. Njoroge and G. A. Bennaars. Transafrica Press, Nairobi. 1986. 259 pp., 80 Kenyan shillings, paperback. Sub-titled ‘an introductory text for students of education’, this book is the outcome of some ten years of the authors’ experiences in teaching philosophy of education courses at Kenyatta University. The book divides into two halves, the first of which is taken up with clarifying the nature of the philosophy of education, while the second part is concerned with the meaning of education. While both of these themes have a fully justifiable place in an intr~ucto~ text, confinement to them does not convey the range of the subject. This limitation could be serious if the book is to be used as a course textbook. For example, there is no discussion of such standard agenda items as indignation, training, autonomy, neutrality, emotion, equality, assessment, authority, punishment, choice or control of the curriculum, though part two does indicate something of the variety of overall conceptions of education. The authors define philosophy as ‘any serious attempt by people to arrive at an answer or response to the basic questions of human Iife’. They proceed to distinguish general from technical philosophy so as to mark off informal achievements in the way of individual wisdom from the more critically disciplined and special&d thinking of the professional philsopher. Technical philosophy of education is further divided into ethnophilosophy, for example, a study of the thought-world of the Bantu, phenomenological study of cultural forms, critique of political ideas on education and analytic philosophy. As in some Western countries, a long period of attention to the ‘isms’ (pragmatism, empiricism, etc.) is said to have given way in the 1960s to the idea of there being foundation disciplines (history, psychology, sociology and philosophy). Of these, philosophy of education was at first concerned with Peters, Hirst and their associates, but this was found to be too abstract and insuffi~ently directed to an African context. There was also the problem of finding people with sufficient training in technical philosophy to teach analytic philosophy of education. One result of this was that study became assimilated to Freire’s ‘banking’ concept of education, whereas the authors wish to stress philosophy as an activity .and not a body of knowledge, or as process rather than product. ‘Ihe second part of the book, on the meaning of education, begins with Peters’ three criteria for the concept. Discussion then leads to the development of four ‘dimensions’ of education: the normative, the cognitive, the creative and the dialogic. This Ieads to a definition of education as ‘the intersubjective process of learning to be a self-reliant person in society’. In the course of discussing these four dimensions, the authors venture into ethics and epistemology (the normative and the cognitive dimensions), they appraise progressive or child-centered theory, and Nyerere’s concept of self-reliance thus finds favour. I 287
288
BOOK REVIEWS
found the discussion of knowledge to be the most interesting in this part. I was puzzled by the repeated expression of a desire for an African philosophy of education, when so much of their own chosen discussion referred to Western texts and Western historical experience. In what sense can philosophy of education be African? There seem to me to be at least two senses in which this might validly be possible. Firstly, more work in philosophy of education might originate in the thinking of African scholars, and secondly, philosophical methods of critical assessment might be applied more to specifically African problems, institutions or practices. But in both cases, philosophy of education would remain in a very important sense nonAfrican. This does not mean that it would thereby be British or American; it would just be philosophy, much as mathematics and science are not any particular nation’s property. P. 0. Bodunrin of the University of Ibadan took a similarly universal view of pure philosophy in an article entitled ‘The Question of African Philosophy’ in the journal Philosophy, April 1981. The authors certainly make a contribution to getting a more African philosophy of education in the first sense, namely by themselves engaging in philosophical discussion of educational questions. To the extent that their arguments are valid and interesting they could merit a place in courses taught in Britain, America or anywhere else; they would not necessarily be peculiarly African. Taking the other valid alternative, namely of applying general philosophical methods to peculiarly African problems, it seems to me that there was much more opportunity here than had been taken. There are indeed some references to Nyerere’s concept of self-reliance, and an epistemological point is illustrated by reference to knowing the usefulness of fertiliser for a shamba, but there is no discussion of such concepts as, for example, national development, national consciousness, harambee schools or equality as against selection for qualitatively superior education. Perhaps a major political problem lies in a way of more philosophical discussion in these areas, namely the possible lack of freedom of the African scholar to comment on political ideas and movements. But are there any educational ideas that are entirely without political implications? This may well be an intractable problem, in spite of a cover design suggestive of a new dawn. The book is reasonably well produced, though in my copy pages 81-112 confusingly came between 144 and 145. Users of the book would have benefited from provision of an index. There is a select bibliography of eighteen titles, some of which I would not myself wish to recommend. R. F. DEARDEN
University of Birmingham
New Horizons In Muslim Education: Islamic Monograph Series: Syed Ali Ashraf. Hodder & Stoughton/Islamic Academy, Cambridge, 1985, 138 pp. In this monograph, the author Syed Ali Ashraf, who was one of the Organising Secretaries (Dr Abdullah Zaid, a Saudi educationist and the present reviewer were the other two) of the First World Conference on Muslim Education
held in Holy Makkah in 1977 and its follow-up seminars which were held successively at Islamabad in 1980, Dhaka in 1981 and Jakarta in 1982, recapitulates on certain issues of Muslim education which these moots considered and the impact that they, in Ashrafs view, have generated. To mention the background in which these conferences were held, it may be remembered that, as the new international ideological and cultural patterns began to crystallise in the post War years, it became increasingly evident to the Muslim Ummah who had emerged from the colonial rule alienated, divided and ideologically confused, that unless Muslims made a concerted effort, an intellectual j&ad, to rediscover their own true self and established their modus vivendi in the new world order, they would be threatened with a check-mate from the imposing world of science, technology and secularism. Even during the colonial heydays Muslim thinkers like AlAfghani (Iran), Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (India), Shaikh Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Egypt) and Sir Muhammad Iqbai (Pakistan) and others had essayed to reconstruct Islamic thought and education in the wake of the impact of Western Education accepting its universalistic and rejecting its particularistic trends. Iqbal alone had produced a persuasive intellectual synthesis of Islam and modem thought which gave Muslims great repose in their own heritage. In 1975, the Saudi government decided to sponsor three world-level conferences on technology (1975), economics (1976) and education (1977) to encourage the present day generation of scholars to articulate Islamic concepts and principles in these important fields. Held in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, these moots received universal Muslim acclaim and gave the Ummah a renewed confidence. There were two crucial aspects to the process of reconstruction of Islamic thought and education: (a) to enunciate concepts upholding Ismlamic norms vis d vb ensuring the development of liberal and rational thought and scientific and technolo~cal progress, and (b) to interpret and implement these concepts within the Muslim institutional networks in order to influence policies and planning for the achievement of perceived Muslim objectives. The most obtrusive ideological challenge to Islam comes from the rising tide of secularism which is subtly and surreptitiously entering into Islamdom through modern systems and lifestyles. Secularism, as defined by its proponents and taken to its logical conclusion, rejects any belief in God as the creator of the universe and hence the source of knowledge. It obliges man to reject the supernatural and instead, deifies man. Islam, on the other hand, enjoins an unquestioning belief in God as the creator, sustainer and master of the universe; and the source of all knowledge. It commits man to the fullest understanding of the infinite mysteries of the universe and fulfilment of the divine imperatives in life. Secularism is seen by Muslims, inter afia, as a justification for man’s mastery over man; the cleverer, tech~ologi~lly advanced and more powerful man will dominate, control and enslave the poorer, backward and less fortunate man. Therefore, as ideal typical normative systemsm Islam and secularism are mutuaUy anti-thetical, and Ashraf is right in asserting that in ideal terms there can be no compromise between the two. But, at the practical level, Islam has successfully obliterated the bi-polar, dualistic juxtaposition of reality: the domain of God as opposed to the domain of man. According to Islam, nothing is outside the domain of God,